


hold your breath and count to ten

by cerealmilk



Category: Among Us (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Other, POV Second Person, ambiguous death scenes, due to personal reasons i now control the game mechanics, listen i. i have an excuse for this, wtf gay little impostor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:36:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26657515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerealmilk/pseuds/cerealmilk
Summary: “We’re going to run out of air in five minutes,” you say quietly.Cyan stares at the side of your helmet. What’s going through her head right now remains a mystery. The silence, or what would be silence if not for the alarms, is crushing.“I would rather die with you,” you continue eventually, voice a little stilted. “Than without you.”
Relationships: Crewmate/Impostor (Among Us), Cyan/Blue (Among Us)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 214





	hold your breath and count to ten

**Author's Note:**

> this might be the most cursed and messy thing i have ever written. the idea "romeo and juliet but gay and among us" has been living in my head rent free for 24 hours and i think i need medical help. this is loosely based on the situation when ur playing impostor and one of the crewmates vouches super hard for you bc youve been sticking together and just chilling and then you eventually have to kill them 
> 
> anyways. gay impostor brain rot

**one.**  
  
You pick blue. It's a nice color.  
  
The rest of your friends appear in the lobby one by one, bickering amongst themselves.

Pink and Orange offer you twin nods. White, Red, and Green are too busy poking fun at each other to pay you any mind. Yellow is trying to figure out what hat he wants. Lime is chasing Purple around one of the crates in the dropship. Cyan is fiddling with her wristband, but when she notices you watching, she waves.

Ten. That’s everyone. Shortly after this realization, the countdown begins, and everything goes dark.

A red light emerges from your wristband. You look up. White stares back at you. He smiles.

Two impostors remain.

  
**two.**  
  
White kills Lime. Lime was on cameras. It's just business.  
  
Yellow is the one who eventually finds the body, but by then, it’s old and cold and everyone has built a sufficient alibi to be non-suspicious. Everyone skips, more wary, now, but none the wiser.

As the meeting comes to an end, Cyan turns to look at you and asks you to stick with her. You nod numbly.

It’ll make a good alibi.

That’s the story you tell yourself.

  
**three.**  
  
True to your word, you follow Cyan out of the cafeteria after the meeting. In the corner of your eye, you see Red, Orange, and White go off together, and you know that’s only going to end one way.

She takes you up through weapons, and while she fixes wires, you sit in the gunner’s seat and shoot at nothing but air. When you hop off the seat, she’s waiting for you.  
  
You stay with her in navigation, watching her calibrate the direction of the ship. The folding knife tucked in your pocket feels like a branding iron.  
  
It would be easy to kill her here. No one has seen either of you in some time. The thought of it, though, makes your stomach twist, and you know you wouldn’t even have the heart to try.  
  
Lights go out, and you turn to look for Cyan in the room. She finds you after a moment, giving you a look up and down to make sure you’re okay. Seemingly satisfied, she grabs your hand, fearless in the darkness as you move towards electrical, and your heart skips a concerning amount of beats before it remembers how to function. Purple meets up with you, and you guard the both of them while they flip the switches back to normal.  
  
A body is found outside of admin. Orange. Red was the last person seen with her. He's voted off the ship.  
  
Two impostors remain.  
****

**four.**  
  
You stick with Pink for a while, watching them go about completing trash compactor and offering them a thumbs up as the junk careens out into space. After that, you leave them alone. It will be alibi enough.

The lights in the ship begin to blare red. Reactor meltdown. You make your way to the security room alone and wait.  
  
Purple and Yellow get to the reactor first. They don’t even notice you slink inside after them. By the time they see White crawl out of the vent, it’s too late.  
  
You run Yellow through with a knife while White wraps his arms around Purple's neck and twists. As their bodies fall to the ground, White looks up at you, the grin beneath his helm feral.  
  
Footsteps arrive in the hallway. You duck into the vent. White is too slow.  
  
Cyan leads the charge against him. The evidence is overwhelming. If anyone notices that you’re quiet during the trial, it goes unmentioned.  
  
One impostor remains.  
****

**five.**  
  
You turn to make your way down to storage, because Green went down there by herself, but a hand gently catches your wrist, so you stop, giving Cyan an inquisitive look. She tips her head in a different direction and begins to pull. You don’t resist.  
  
She drags you to the medical bay. You watch her stand on the scanner, the green lights scanning her up and down before giving an affirmative noise. Not allowed to speak, you offer her a thumbs up like you had to Pink. You can’t see it, but you can tell she playfully rolls her eyes, and the thought makes all your insides feel like goo.

White is probably rolling in his grave. That’s fine. If he wanted to yell at you, he should have tried not dying.  
  
After she finishes up her tasks in medbay, she follows you to admin, and you pretend to struggle with the wires until someone else somewhere on the ship completes a task. The guilt tastes sour.  
  
Lights go out again. You and Cyan stand inches away from each other, the lights from your helmets forming a small halo of luminosity around you. You can see the room perfectly in the darkness, but you know that you are the only thing she can see, the only thing anchoring her to a sense of security, so you stand still and pretend to keep watch for any third party.  
  
She’s so close.

There’s this little half-smile playing on her face, like she can see straight through you, can see what she’s _doing_ to you, and really, that’s not fair at all.

The knife is still in your pocket, but all you really want to do is hold her hand.  
  
Just when you think your chest is about to explode, the lights come back on. It's only when she pulls away that you realize you haven't been breathing.  
****

**six.**  
  
Pink is alone in electrical. They really should have thought that one through.  
****

**seven.**  
  
Green calls an emergency meeting. She calls you suspicious. Interrogates you for the tasks you’ve done. Your tongue is glued to the roof of your mouth.

Cyan vouches for you, speaking quickly and assuredly that you’ve been together the whole time. She says that the only reason there haven’t been any kills is because you and her are never apart and that intimidates Green. She says the only person it could be is Green, and looks to you for support. You've never felt so sick before in your life.  
  
Staring at her, you forget to vote. Life goes on.  
****

**eight.**  
  
The three of you go your separate ways, mistrust clouding the air, the tension so thick you could cut it. Cyan is probably finishing up her last few tasks, you think as you wander through the ship. As you pass through the cafeteria, having crawled inside from the vents, you see Green make her way to the storage room.

It’s easy to fall into step after her. You catch up easily. She is moving slow and careful and that, you think with some degree of irony, will be her downfall.  
  
You move into her field of vision and close the doors behind you, and you can pinpoint the exact and definite moment that Green realizes she's trapped. It’s probably somewhere between the hissing sound of the doors sliding shut and the half-second it takes you to rush her.

The knife slips between her ribs like butter, and she crumples against you. You ease her down to the ground, blood hot against your suit. Green’s body sits slumped against the crates. If not for the red stains, it would almost look like she’s taking a nap.  
  
And then you wait.  
  
Ghosts are moving about the ship, the taskbar slowly ticking upwards. That’s fine. You aren’t in any rush. You can hardly find it in yourself to care.

Green is probably looming over your shoulder right now, furious. You hope she knows you’re sorry. She probably won’t believe you.  
  
Your kill cool-down resets, and you get to your feet. As you do, the door to storage opens.

Cyan stands there, haloed by white light. The visor of her helmet is glossy like a mirror, and in it, you see only your own bloodstained image.

You’d known it would come to this, but knowing doesn’t make it hurt any less.  
****

**nine.**  
  
You don’t know how long you stand there, staring at each other, breathing slow and heavy.  
  
"It was you," Cyan breathes.  
  
You nod. There’s nothing else to say.  
  
At the admission, she does this odd little shuffle step, and then she's bolting for the emergency button. You're fine to let it happen.  
  
The oxygen alarms go off. A specter of White flashes before you briefly.

Figures. He always was a sore loser.  
  
Eventually, you make your way after her, not in any sort of rush now. After all, there’s no way she can fix both oxygen tanks before it depletes. Though, you suppose she is acting under the assumption that you’re going to kill her.

She’s easy to spot in the cafeteria, slumped against the far wall, head tipped against the window. The space beyond is vast and cold and empty. White is probably floating around out there, somewhere.

When you step into her field of vision, she looks up.  
  
"So, this is it, then?" she asks, resigned. And it could be. You could kill her here, and you know she wouldn't resist.  
  
Instead, the knife clatters to the ground. She watches it. In the flashes of red from the oxygen alarm, you cannot read her expression.  
  
“Huh,” she says, sounding unbearably neutral. That’s fine. You’d rather she hate you than be afraid of you. She isn’t running away.  
  
You turn and slide down the window to sit next to her. Your left hand sits between the two of you palm-up like a peace offering. Green's blood still coats your gloves, lukewarm now.  
  
“We’re going to run out of air in five minutes,” you say quietly.

Cyan stares at the side of your helmet. What’s going through her head right now remains a mystery. The silence, or what would be silence if not for the alarms, is crushing.

“I would rather die with you,” you continue eventually, voice a little stilted. “Than without you.”

After a moment more, she takes your hand.

White is probably screaming at you from beyond.

You don’t care. Not even a little.  
****

**ten.**  
  
The alarms shut off forty-five seconds ago, the lights following not long after, which is probably not a good sign, all things considered. The inside of the ship has steadily dropped in temperature as the pressure decreases, and now, it’s well below freezing, even with the help from your suit.  
  
You're running out of air. Your breath forms as condensation on the inside of your helmet, your body growing weaker by the second. Cyan’s shoulder pressing against yours is all that’s keeping you conscious.  
  
It’s dark, and it’s cold, and you figure you should really be more afraid than you are. But you’re strangely okay with this ending. Cyan is holding your hand and leaning against you and you really couldn’t ask for anything else.  
  
"You were never going to kill me, were you?" she breathes. In the quiet, her voice is nearly deafening, and you have half a mind to tell her to conserve what little air she has left. You decide against it. It won’t matter soon.

She’s turned her head to look at you. You do the same. The lights of your helmets are dim, flickering in and out of existence.  
  
"No," you croak back. "I wasn't."  
  
“I would have killed you by now,” she says. You can hear the smile in her voice.

“I know,” you say, squeezing her hand once gently with the little strength you have left. “I would have let you.”  
  
The visors of your helmets knock together.  
  
It feels just like falling asleep.   
****

**play again?**  
  
The first thing you hear as you and Cyan phase into the new lobby is:  
  
"You guys are some dramatic motherfuckers."  
  
White is standing there with his arms crossed, foot tapping on the ground. He looks supremely dissatisfied. That’s probably your fault. You offer him an apologetic smile. He scoffs.  
  
“Don’t give me that look. You aren’t sorry at all! You were about to simp so hard you’d let her win.”

Technically true. You don’t feel the least bit sorry.  
  
Pink makes a noise of protest. "I thought it was sweet."  
  
"You went to electrical by yourself. You don't get to have an opinion."  
  
"This is dumbass erasure, first of all, and second of all—"  
  
The lobby explodes into noise. People are picking sides, mostly just ganging up on White because he tries too hard and it’s fun to pick on him. In the chaos, your gaze finds Green’s. You nod at her, an apology, but a sincere one this time. She rolls her eyes and waves her hand. Water under the bridge.  
  
Satisfied with that, you turn to look at Cyan. She's laughing, one hand covering her mouth, the other still held in yours. When she catches you staring, her smile widens, the corners of her eyes crinkling with mirth.

She squeezes your hand. She’ll probably kill you next round.

That’s fine, you think, squeezing back. You’d let her kill you anytime.

**Author's Note:**

> *flushed emoji* what if we died together as O2 went off... haha jk.... unless...?


End file.
